“It is sobering to reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself areputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating thevery phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle forindependence.” – Charles A. Beard

We have more oil reserves than any country in the world. We send over 700 billion dollars a year to countries that want to destroy us. This is not only a financial concern, but a defensive one, too. What are we going to do if turmoil in the Middle East stops our supply of fuel and Hugo Chavez decides to cut us off from the 20% of oil we get from Venezuela? Not to mention the jobs that would be created. Our President invests billions of our dollars to foreign countries to drill in waters deeper than we are allowed to. Doesn’t make much sense does it? I am all for alternative forms of energy, but they must be economically feasible to work. Especially if other countries refuse to. We subsidize ethanol because of the farming lobbyists; when sugar cane and wheat grass are a much more efficient way to produce the same thing. The Department of Energy was created in 1979 for the sole purpose of weaning us off of foreign oil. Today, we spend over 24 billion dollars a year for this government agency and our dependence on foreign oil has doubled since its inception. The EPA is another agency that is stifling growth. A few years ago the EPA shelved a report that man has little to do with the earth’s temperature, but that doesn’t stop them from promoting Al Gore’s agenda. The EPA also stopped a solar farm from being built because they needed to do a study on how it would affect a desert mole. In Texas, they are holding up drilling because it may affect two types of lizards that are not even indigenous to this country. Where is the common sense?

The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of ‘liberalism,’ they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.”– Norman Thomas, U.S. Socialist Party presidential candidate 1940, 1944 and 1948

Tort reform and competitive insurance options across state lines are just a start. Insurance companies should not be allowed to buy hospitals. It is a serious conflict of interest. We need to do something about the illegal immigration crises, too. Emergency rooms are also used to treat the smallest of ailments for illegal’s, indigents and the uninsured. It is the most expensive form of healthcare and the working middle class ends up paying the bill. Unless there is a severe emergency or the patient is in tremendous pain, then these people should wait for the free clinics to open. I don’t want to seem cold and callous, but we have serious financial problems and these issues must be addressed and dealt with. People who are uninsured need to take some responsibility for the expense they cause, too. A wage garnishment is one solution to help them take more responsibility. Possibly deduct just a little more than what it would cost them to be insured. Currently, if someone comes down with a disease and becomes uninsurable, they can use their COBRA insurance for just one year, then they have to go through their savings to qualify for Medicaid. I suggest that insurance companies keep them on the groups insurance at the same rate until they qualify for alternative coverage. Socialized medicine is not effective financially nor will help develop new innovations. Again, this is an issue that I want the public to chime in on. I honestly believe, as a group, the average American can come up with better solutions than our elected officials who are tainted by political donations and lobbyists.

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannotsurvive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.” Cicero 58 Before Christ

Our founding fathers never envisioned that money from corporations and organizations would ever influence our judicial system and election process to the extent it does today. When a company donates to both parties, it is not for political ideology, it is so they have a voice in how our laws are made and enforced. It is so expensive to run a campaign that our politicians sell their souls and our futures to remain competitive. Consequently, laws are passed for the corporations instead of what is right for the populace. Even though our current president ran on the promise that no lobbyists would be in his administration, reality has proven otherwise. Who do you think wrote the laws that were passed that no one was able to read until the vote? Lobbyists did. Now Obama also promised us that we would have two weeks to read any bill on the internet before a vote took place, we would be out of Iraq by 2011, healthcare debates on CSPAN, cut the deficit in half by his first term and that he would reach across the aisle to Republicans. No need to address those issues which is a good part of the reason I’m designing this website. Here is an idea that I know will never be passed, but I’m throwing it out there anyway. Only allow an individual to donate the maximum amount the law allows. No corporate, union and especially overseas donations should be allowed. Require TV stations to run mandatory debates months before an election and have papers print exactly what a candidate stands for and keep their opinions on the opinion page. Imagine no corporate, union or overseas donations (like the estimated 200 million plus from the Middle East in the last election) allowed. Maybe, just maybe our politicians would be more inclined to pass laws that are good for the people instead of the donors. NAFTA was passed by both parties because of campaign donations. Ross Perot warned us that we would soon hear a giant sucking sound of our jobs going overseas. Can anyone dispute that he was wrong? Big Pharma is pumping over one and a half million dollars a day inside the Beltway. Remember the H1N1 scare? We spent billions for vaccines; many of the vaccines were impotent. In order for our politicians to pay back their campaign donors, they approved this unnecessary expenditure. How about the recent Solyndra debacle? We wasted over half a billion dollars to repay campaign donors. These are just two examples, there are many more. I know my idea is not feasible, but I honestly believe it is the biggest problem our country faces.

“The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.” Albert Einstein

Ok I’ll say it. Unions and their unsustainable benefit packages are destroying us. It takes seven to eight comparable private sector jobs to support one government employee. There is incredible abuse of government employee contracts. For example, the West Palm Beach, Fl police department is guaranteed an 8% return on their 401k investment plus a pension. This is unsustainable in the private sector when a bank deposit will not even return a 2% profit. Who pays the difference? The taxpayers do. Or when a civil servant works 20 years and then retires, only to get another pension when he or she gets another government job. Not applicable in the real world and it shouldn’t be the same for government work. When a comparable government job pays more than the private sector job, this is even more unfair to the citizens that pay their salaries. Another abuse of the system is that many Civil Servant’s contracts determine their future pensions on how much they made the last year they worked. A common practice is to overload the employee with massive overtime their last year so their lifetime pension will increase dramatically. Who pays for this abuse? You guessed it, we do.

Abraham Lincoln has been given credit for this quote, but it was actually a Presbyterian preacher named William Boektor. Lincoln wrote something on the same paper in 1842, thus the mistake was made.

You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away people’s initiative and independence.
You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves.

Our system needs to be completely revised. We give incentives for people not to work and produce more. This is unproductive, illogical and a serious drain on our resources. There are many working welfare recipients that are very concerned about earning too much so they will not be eligible for benefits. I can’t blame them, but I can blame a system that perpetuates their efforts to not do better. When we capped benefits in the 90s with the Contract With America, more people were back at work. I don’t have all the answers, but I do know the current system is not viable. Please include any ideas that will lead to a positive solution. I believe basic healthy food products should be delivered to homes instead of the use of Food Stamps that is wrought with fraud and bad diet choices. Also, if someone is receiving welfare, then they should be required to do some work for their community a few hours a week. Even if the hours are spent just picking up trash or painting a building. There are also many knowledgeable welfare recipients that can teach others their skills.

“An event has happened, upon which it is difficult to speak, and impossible to be silent.” Edmund Burke

Hire a private company to weed out the terrible waste of tax payer’s dollars. Pay them five to ten percent of the fraud they uncover and the American public can save hundreds of billions of dollars without hiring more government employees whose incentives are not always the same as those that pay their salaries and benefits. Also, there will be no new government employees to sustain and the program will pay for itself.

Say a state pays 10k a year to educate a child. I propose that qualified home school moms and dads be allowed to take in as many kids in the neighborhood that choose to sign up. Pay the parent or parents teaching 6k per child, pay 2k to the school they were going to attend and the state saves 2k. There are many companies that would donate or sell at cost computers and internet connections for those of modest means. Testing can be done through proctors, like we had when we took our SATs. With computers you can even hire someone to monitor the classes, which the state should do. I strongly believe that children should be computer literate in this day and age, especially inner city kids. There have been questions of fraud being brought up, but I believe there are solutions for that, too.

The result would be 1) The state would save money 2) The school would have more money per child to spend 3) Some unemployed parents can be at home, provide a service to the community and make a living 4) The child would get a better education (statistically speaking), more individual attention, social skills and a chance to graduate early. 5) Hopefully, less teachers and their unsustainable benefits packages 6) Choice for people who cannot afford to have one.

Also, if a child does graduate early, say one year early, then they should get 5k from the state to go to further their education, whether it be college or a trade school. Home schooled children should also be allowed to participate in extracurricular activities like band or sports. Transportation would be the parent’s responsibility.

Close the Department of Education and let the states control the schools. Charter schools have shown to be a much better alternative than public. Our President closed all of the charter schools in D.C. because the Unions fund, support and pull his strings. They are less expensive and infinitely superior. I suggest everyone watch the documentary”Waiting For Superman”. It was directed by the same man that made “An Inconvenient Truth”; the main difference in this movie is it is actually truthful.